If you're looking for
information about Calling in the Puma Concolor, you've come to the right
place!

I've built
this page to document Cougar Call-In stories....

as both
a "Testimonial" page for my Lion Calling products,

and as
an educational resource for ANY other Mountain Lion Hunters.

I'm going to organize it under three
sub-headings,

RS: Those with RainShadow Calling
Products,

O: those with other calls and sounds.

A: Accidental Call-Ins! Any
calling stand where a Cougar showed up!

As I gather these stories, I'm going to do my
best to be factual, and complete, so you'll know the scenario, the tools used,
and the sounds used. While at the same time, keeping them very, very, very
short!

To my knowledge, there is no other resource on
the Web SPECIFICALLY focusing on successful Mountain Lion Calling stands.

After helping a friend
deliver some lumber, I went to an area where I had seen cougar tracks. It was so
foggy, I could not see 40 feet. I sat in the rig until the fog lifted then I
walked out a trail a ways and set up. I found an open area and set the caller
and a decoy that looks like a rabbit next to a downed log. I was sitting
against a tree about 40 yards away.

I called with a deer
distress sound, and I mixed in the first edition RS Cougar Whistle [ the new
version is M09 ]. After 30 minutes of near constant calling, I saw a cougar
walking my way about 120 yards away. My Dr. tells me that my standing heart
rate is 58… within a beat or two of seeing that cat... which looked 10 feet
long… my heart rate must have gone to 150. I only saw him for a couple seconds,
but he was walking upright, slowly. He disappeared from sight and I was trying
to figure out how he might approach. I saw him again and I could see that he
was gonna come thru’ some timber and brush to my left. Sure enough there he
was….still walking upright and focused on the sound and the decoy. I didn’t
know whether to turn off the sound or leave it running so I turned it down and
left it running.

It had been about 10 minutes
from when I first saw him, and he had first gone out of sight. I turned a small
amount and was in a good position to shoot, but was not calmed down one bit… I
may have been worse... I am not sure. He had stopped with his head behind a
tree... 25 to 30 yards away. I shot for the lung area. I saw hair fly and he
jumped up about 6 feet with his back arched and went over backwards and then ran
toward the thick timber. He never knew I was there.

I sat there for a few minutes
just taking in what had happened and then went to look. I found a few drops of
blood and then nothing as he crossed an open area covered with snow. I looked
around thinking this may not be a good deal to have a wounded cougar in the
thick brush that the tracks headed toward. After a few more minutes, I
started following the tracks and found him about 75 feet from where he was when
I shot….dead as could be…YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS !!!

He was a male..7’11” nose to
tail. I did not have a scale big enough to weigh him. He had been in a fight
very recently. He has a torn lower eye lid and 6 or 7 cuts clear thru’ the hide
on his head and right side as well as two deep cuts on two of the foot pads.
All cuts looked very fresh.

I have been fortunate to have
hunted for 50+ years… Prairie dogs to Moose... but nothing quite as exciting as
this!

Gramps went to a
known area (very little tracking snow this year), made a good stand and executed
a perfect call-in on a BIG Tom! The Big Tom is tagged over a Sub Adult
Whistle!!! Way to go Gramps!!!

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- - - -

RS2
Customer Snag Point, SE Washington "own back yard" Encounter:

In the fall of 2008, there
was a couple of cougars working the river bottom on my small farm. Having
spotted them a couple of times, (never with gun in hand) I began to work out the
time table of the cat's movements in our area.

One of the days that I felt
he would be around, I grabbed my fx3 and headed to the woods. Just as I was
starting to slip into the woods a calf (moo cow calf, not elk) came charging
down a trail. Then a moment later I could hear a cougar roaring and screaming
about 500 yards away.

I thought "Oh boy, this dang
cat's after that calf and all I have to do it sit tight and watch the trail."
More roars but no sign of the cougar.

Then I slipped over set up my
call and planted my butt in a tree stand that I had set up. More caterwauling, I
started my calling with one of the first edition RS Cougar whistles. The woods
went silent. Then in about ten minutes, a small bush wiggled a bit, the woods
are even more quite. I thought my heart would bust a rib it was pounding so
hard. Then the cat made a muffled growl, but it would not come out of its cover.

Within a couple minutes
shooting light was gone, and I had a upset Kitty within 50 yards of my stand. I
sat tight for another 1/2 hour or better. Then slithered out of my tree. In my
mind I could still hear that roar, as I made my way through the now dark woods
towards the lights of my house.

Picture I took another
day to show the setup. Looking down from my tree stand towards the area hiding
the cougar.

Patterning the cats frequenting his property and calling a vocal cat with a
non-aggressive sound ALMOST paid off!

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RS3Customer
/ Long time Friend Okanagan, NW Washington :

We
found cougar tracks in the general area, so my son and I climbed to a mid
afternoon stand in open old growth timber on a steep spur ridge running down off
a big mountain. I put the Minaska M1 on top of a root wad six feet off the
ground. The internal speaker pointed to a smaller timbered basin on one side
and I set the TOA speaker three feet away to point into a huge timbered basin on
the other side of the ridge.

My son sat 30 feet uphill from
me facing uphill, above a slight break in the slope. The e-caller was below the
break, level with me and 20 feet to one side. I sat with my back against a big
fir facing downhill.

I
started the calling sequence with Duelling Fawns at low volume and ramped it up
to max. Within seconds I switched to a recording of myself blowing a Weems All
Call, a proven cougar call. It is the loudest distress sound I have. After a
minute of LOUD prey sound to get the attention of any cougar on the
mountainside, I switched to RS Cougar whistles and let it run.

Three
minutes into the stand my son fired his 7mm magnum. BLAM! Long pause. No
sound but the e-caller’s sporadic cougar whistles. Then, BLAM! He shot
again. One shot is good. Two shots are usually bad, especially on a cougar
stand. This time he called out to me, “It’s a cougar!” “Did you get him?” I
asked. “I don’t know,” he replied as I scrambled around my big tree and up the
hill.

Two
and a half minutes into the stand he’d seen a cougar running toward us down the
ridge. It paused looking downhill toward the calling sound, it was looking past
him toward the e-caller. It started toward us again, moving fast in a low
crouch. It passed behind a huge fir tree and he pulled up his rifle while the
lion’s vision was blocked. When the cat came into view again he was looking at
it through the scope.

It stopped and sat up on its
haunches at 75-80 yards facing downhill toward him. He felt steady with the aim
and shot at its chest. The lion did not move. It was an obvious miss. (After
examining the bullet path, we figured that the first shot had hit the top of a
wispy bush half way to the cat and deflected.) He cranked the bolt reflexively
as one sound with the shot, took his time and shot at its chest again. This
time the cat disappeared downhill to his left.

He ran up the hill toward where
he’d seen the cat and found it slid against a down log where he put in an
insurance finisher shot.

A
hot track, a long hike, and persistent shooting under pressure! Cougar Tagged.

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- - -

RS4
RainShadow Call-in, NW Washington :

I received a sighting report,
mid-day, December 5th. I was able to respond to it, and get on stand within 45
minutes. It was in a rural NW Washington State foothill neighborhood. I set up
in a DNR clearcut and called into a stand of second growth. Limited area skirted
by houses and roads. I set up in the shade of a root ball, and gave up the
direction I came in from entirely.

I called for 5 minutes with
JS rodent distress at mid volume, then 5 minutes with MO Baby Cottontail at full
volume, then 5 minutes with RS Cougar Up at full volume, then was several
minutes into RS Cougar CFPC when the large Female approached the caller from the
timber, walking right down a well worn trail.

It stopped approximately 7
yards from the MAD Big Country, and looked at the caller then at me. (I was
fidgeting around, running my video camera and trying to get behind the scope. It
couldn't see me, it was looking into the sun, but it saw movement.) I was
approximately 50 yards away.

I was calling using a critter
call making fawn bleat sounds, I was primarily targeting bears as I had gotten
several pictures on my trail cams in the area. I had been calling for about 10
minutes and heard a lion vocalize about 200 yards below me.

The country I was calling was
a mixture of Ponderosa pine and oak brush. I switched to using juvenile whistles
on the hand call I had gotten from RainShadow. Within about 5 minutes I saw a
lion working its way up the header towards me. It was just coming at a steady
walk. It got within about 60 yards of me and laid down watching in my direction.
It laid there for several minutes.

I didn't have a great shot as
I could only see about the top quarter of the cat. I slowly positioned my gun
and felt I would just wait till it stood. I was watching it through my scope and
saw movement behind it. She had a kitten with her. As I watched she had another
join her. I knew at this stage I wasn't going to shoot so I just settled down
and watched.

She lay there for about 30
minutes never moving. The kittens moved under some brush and also stood without
moving. She finally stood up and walked back the way she came, with the kittens
following. One of the neatest things I have seen while in the hills.

I'll
say! What a great experience! I'm glad I was able to play a small part with the
Sub-Adult hand call. Female W/Cubs, observed!

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- - -

RS6 RainShadow
Call-In, Arizona :

I was hunting the San Carlos
Apache reservation in Arizona with guide Farrell Goode. He had been informed of
a heifer kill on a ranch, and we had got ourselves as close to the area as we
could in the blind. (We didn't know exactly where the kill was, and we didn't
have birds to show us where to go.)

I had brought along some hand
calls to give to Farrell, so we started out the stand with them. I blew about a
minute on a cottontail distress. Then I blew about a minute on a jackrabbit
distress. Then I started blowing on the RainShadow Sub Adult Whistle hand call.
Immediately from across the draw we were set up in, we got an aggressive Male
Territorial growl.

I switched to the WT, running
the young whistle, and started glassing the far ridge (360 yards) to try to pick
out the cat. Couldn't find it. About a minute into the WT whistles, the Mountain
Lion gave another Male Territorial growl, this time from about 100 yards down
the ridge. I don't know if we were busted, or what it didn't like, but as far as
we could tell, that cat never came all the way in.

Calling near a recent kill,
the cat was there! No shots fired, RS hand called territorial Male, confirmed by
a vocal response.

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RS7Customer
Testimonial, South Cascades, WA. :

I was running the call, so my son could
just concentrate on watching. About four minutes into the set we both heard a
branch break and something that sounded like the branch hitting the ground, a
ways off to our right. The wind was blowing, so I didn't think too much about
it. It was just a branch breaking out of a fir tree.

Then it ANSWERED the call! I thought "no
way", I didn't just hear that. I slowly turned and looked over at my son and he
had that surprised, "was that what I think it was?" look on his face.

Neither of us moved for about a minute or
two, and I started lowering the volume on the call, trying to simulate a cat
walking away. We heard it twice more on our right side, just over a little rise
about 20 yards away. Then it went quiet.

My son started to slowly, slowly turn so he
could get a better shot towards the right where the sound came from. We were
absolutely ready! My heart was in my throat, and I wanted to do my
"answer" whistle on my RS mouth call, but my mouth was drier than a popcorn
fart.

We were both concentrating on the little
rise, because we were positive that is where the cat was, and it was going to
show any second. Another five minutes went by, and I looked at my
son, and caught movement down the hill but way off to the left. Then a cat just
appeared! It was almost like it just materialized. It was looking right at us,
and we did a stare down for about a minute. It finally turned and started
walking across toward where the call was, so my son started to turn back to to
the left get a shot. The cat stopped and just stared at us for about 10
seconds, and although I hate to apply human emotions to animals.... That cat was
looking at us with absolute evil distain! It was a look that I've only seen one
time, and that was a bear up on Kodiak. It's ears were laid back and it just
spun around a disappeared in the ferns.

From the time we last heard it vocalize
until we first saw it, was probably a minute to a minute and a half. From the
time we first heard it bark/whistle until the time it busted us and left was
probably about 6 or 7 minutes. (So, 4-5 minutes of vocal response on the right,
then it showed up on the left 90 seconds later.) I still don't think it was the
same cat. The way the ground laid, we should've seen it cross below us. Plus I
don't think it had time to get over there without running, in which case I know
we would've seen it. I don't know what exactly happened for sure, if there was
two cats or what.

Hindsight being 20/20, my son should've
just swung left and popped it, but it looked like it was going to stare at us
for a while, or continue across the hill. It was only about 20 yards away, and
was a very large, very angry looking cat. We couldn't really tell how tall it
was because the ferns were covering it from the bottom of the belly to the
ground. It did have a huge (and once again, mean looking) head.

I was playing the RS Cougar Female Calls,
but it responded with a very different call. It sounded like it was two calls
mixed together, a whistle and a kind of bark at the same time. I don't know if
when I started turning the volume down simulate the "cat" getting further away,
that it may have took off and got around below us, I guess we were pretty
focused on where we heard it the last time. Who knows.

Customer called in a large, probably Male Cougar (the description of the vocal
response above sounds to me like a Male Communicative call. Physical description
also indicates it was probably a Tom.) Area had been proven as a regularly
traveled corridor. No Shot Fired, Confirmed call-in to RS Cougar Female Calls by
vocal response, and the infamous "Evil Death Stare!"

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-

RS8RainShadow
Call-In, NW Washington:

Early in the season, must
have been September. It was warm, no tracking snow anywhere. I chose a ridge in
a regularly traveled area and pulled the truck over. My 15 y.o. nephew was
hunting with me. He's a quick study, but was green as can be. He also had just
learned that he needed glasses, but (of course) wasn't wearing them because they
"felt funny."

We hiked up the ridge about
1/2 mile then set up on top, and down one side a little. I set him up about 15
yards off the side of the crown of the ridge with the Benelli, watching the
crown and up from there. I sat about 10 yards below him watching the side of the
ridge and down from there. I set the Minaska M1 at my level, but off to the
uphill side about 30 yards. It was extremely thick.

I was playing a combination
of distress and first edition RS Cougar Whistles, when at about 12 minutes into
the stand, I heard very distinct footsteps at the top of the ridge. I was
looking downhill primarily, so I had to crane my neck hard to the left and pivot
my upper body at the same time to look up to the top of the ridge. I looked
intently, and after about a full minute I picked out a back-lit, silhouetted
shape of the top half of a round head with those little rounded ears, right on
top of the ridge, about 30 yards.

I thought, "No way! That
can't be!" I watched it for about 30 seconds, and almost decided to pick my
Encore up and check it through the scope. Then I thought, "No, [my nephew] is
right there, 20 yards from it, looking uphill. He'd have seen it if it was
really..." I watched it for another 2 minutes or so, it never even flickered.
Just a shape. Still as stone. "Nah! Must be my imagination." I turned back and
watched my front for the rest of the stand.

Just as I was ending the
stand, I looked back up behind me... and for the life of me couldn't find that
half of a head again! I looked hard for several minutes and never found what I
was looking at earlier. I found the bushes, trees and stumps I had marked all
around it, but it was gone!

I went over to my nephew and
said, "Did you hear something, right at about 12 minutes?" He said, "Yeah.
Footsteps. Right over there." and he pointed right where I had seen the top half
of the cat's head! I said, "Did you see anything?" he said, "No. But I'm not
wearing my glasses." (AAAaaaaaarrrrrgh!!!!) "I said, "I think we just got
BUSTED!"

Blown opportunity in a known
travel corridor. Call-in confirmed by a sighting and sneaking paws in the moss.

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- - -

RS9Customer
Testimonial, South Central WA. :

We snowmobiled in about 25 miles or so on the road, until we found tracks. We
parked the sleds, strapped on the snowshoes and walked for about a half hour or
so, (until I started to sweat bad), and set up. (Actually, I got tired of my
son whispering comments to me about my physical conditioning).

We set up with a good field of view, and
started calling. I used your RS Cougar Female Calls, and then went to a fawn in
distress. I waited about 8 minutes and went back to the RS Cougar Whistle. I
just kept doing that sequence, varying the duration each cycle.

About 45 minutes into it we both saw a cat
coming across the open area down by the creek bottom about 300 yards away. It
was coming up the hill towards us, and we both thought it was a big bobcat until
we got a good look at it's tail. It was probably about 40 to 60 lbs.

I turned the caller down, and muted it
when it was still about 150 yards out. We waited to see what it would do, and
if maybe it would "grow" the closer it got. It came on in slowly to about 30
yards before it stopped, stared, and just kind of wandered off. I don't think
it saw us, or anything.

Called-in
Sub Adult to RS Cougar Female Calls, and one of the RS Cougar Whistles. Cutting
a hot track and following it up for a ways is the #1 technique. No Shot Fired,
Passed up due to its age. (Legal to harvest in WA since it had grown out of its
spots, and was old enough to kill deer and small elk. But this hunter showed
restraint, and let this one have a pass.)

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- - -

RS10Customer
Slayer1, Hunting-Washington . com Western WA:

The news was saying lowland
snow for that morning. Perfect time to get out to do some calling. I was
walking into a area I hunt just waiting to run onto some fresh bobcat tracks
with this new snow. After a few miles, and after passing on some night before
coyote tracks, I stumbled onto fresh lion tracks.

He headed up the mountain
after a brief time on the road. Lucky for me a old road headed up the same
mountain. So I hiked up about 1/2 mile until I came to the top and found a
decent spot to set up.

I set the foxpro out about 20
yds in front of me and got comfortable on top of a old stump. I remember
wishing I had a treestand to get up even higher to get a better view but the
stump would have to do.

Not to long ago I listened to
Brian Downs' Predator Hunting Talkcast, with guest Mark Healey. He talked about
using different distress sounds and lion vocals to try to "trigger" a response
from a cat. So I started with DSG cottontail for a few minutes and then to
blacktail fawn distress for a few, then lightning jack, and finally some RS
juvenile cougar whistles. (First Edition. Slayer1 doesn't remember which
whistles he used because he re-labled all of them on his foxpro.)

After 2 rounds of that and I
see the brown back of a lion moving into position about ten yards from the
call. I swung up my AR and found his head sticking out under a young pine. Put
the crosshairs on him and let him have it. He jumped out to the edge of the
road and took off away from me. I let him have it three more times as he ran
away before he went down. I wasn't planning on letting him get away!

He was a young 1 1/2 year old
tom and weighed around 110#.

Truly a unforgettable
experience.

Have I
said anything about calling a hot track yet?!?! Way to go, Slayer1 !!!

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RS11Customer
LY, NE Arizona:

For me, my son, and a friend, we were
rookies calling lions for the first time. We were hunting on the Navajo
Reservation in northeast Arizona. In a known deer wintering area, located in the
sagebrush flats, with juniper and pinion trees.

Before we began E-calling with a rabbit
distress, the three of us positioned ourselves about eight to ten yards apart.
Our first calling sequence lasted two to three minutes; we then paused for five
minutes and called again for another two to three minutes. This calling session
lasted about twenty minutes.

We stopped calling and after waiting for ten
or fifteen seconds, we heard a response. I responded back, RS handcall whistle,
and the cat responded again. We figured the cat may have been 150 to 200 yards
away from us. No visual contact was made and we were unable to find tracks.

For the first time to be out calling for
lions, we were excited that we got a response. Don’t know if we were busted by
the cat. I’d like to mention, before our stand, we walked onto two separate deer
kills made by two cats. The two kills had the same two cat tracks located around
the carcasses.

So Close! It (they?)
was there checking you out! Just needed to keep calling, and see them before
they saw you!

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RS12
Gramps - SE Washington...

Disappointing as it was, I am
trying to look at it as a teachable moment....for me and maybe others too.
I have hunted cougars off and on for over 20 years and have been fortunate to
see 15 in the wild. It is always exciting, but at my age I don't always remember
that I have made this mistake before....and I think that is what happened.

A few weeks ago I went to a place that I have hunted before looking for tracks
as there was a new skiff of snow. A friend and a buddy had been up to this area
a couple days before and followed some cougar tracks to an Elk kill. I did not
find any tracks on this trip, but went back a few days later and found tracks
along the main road. It looked like 2 or 3 sets of tracks. About 1/2 mile from
the main road on a closed off old logging road I found where 3 cougars had
bedded down for awhile.

It had been foggy and below
freezing for a week or more and everything was covered with frozen
frost....except for the tracks and the beds.....they looked very fresh. This was
a really poor place to try to call because of very limited visibility, but I
tried it anyway. All I could think of was 6 eyeballs watching my every move. I
gave up after about 40 minutes when I got cold.

I went back a couple days later with a plan to walk in from a different
direction and call near an area where the property owner had cleared some small
trees and brush leaving just the bigger trees. This would provide good
visibility. About 20 feet from the pickup, I noticed fresh tracks and where a
cougar had urinated on a small...12" or so..tree. It was bright yellow on the
snow. I was feeling like today was gonna be a good day.

I found my spot and set up. I set the
caller about 30 yards out from where I was gonna sit and waited for about 15
minutes and started to call with a deer in distress, a female cougar sound and
some magpies. I sometimes count the sounds as they play from the caller. This
was the first time I had used a female cougar sound and I was counting the
sounds and on the next loop there was an extra sound.

This is where I may have made my first
mistake or two.

I was sitting against a tree trying to just look without turning my head much at
all. At about the 30 minute mark suddenly there is a cougar sitting down at the
edge of the brush looking at me. It came out at the worst possible
place.....directly in front of me with the caller and the source of the sound in
a direct line and between the cat and me.

As was the case the last time, my heart
rate jumped and I realized I was not positioned to shoot. I usually call sitting
down on the ground with my knees up and my rifle on my knees. Not so this
time.....my legs were out flat. I managed to raise one leg and was going to move
the other one and the rifle at the same time when the cat decided to move on.

I also did not have on my face netting.
This and the movement may have been my undoing. It was about 65 yards from my
location to the cat. I think the beds I saw were a female and two nearly adult
offspring based on the tracks. None of the tracks were very big.

When I got back to the rig, I was gonna
take a picture of the urine in the snow and it was all frosted over and was
barely visible. The temp that morning had been 10 above. The bright yellow I saw
that morning could have been 10 minutes to and hour old.....not much more.

Second Category:

Called Cougars using any Other
products and sounds:

O1Okanagan,
NW Washington :

My favorite calling
stand combined a lion, my son and my father-in-law in a hunt so unlikely it was
a gift.

Our first stand of the
second season we tried for cougars, my son and I picked a saddle in a deer
wintering area from a topo map and decided to make our first stand there. My
wife encouraged us to take her father who would love it. My son picked up his
80 year old grandpa before daylight. He showed us his ancient belt knife he’d
sharpened for a cougar. He had started me calling critters and taught me most
of what I know about calling. With three of us together I considered it a
practice stand to start the year rather than serious lion calling. We set up in
a frozen swamp.

I started calling with
my old Weems, watching the back door. My son was a few feet away, a bit higher
so he could look over the rest of the swamp. A couple of times Grandpa leaned
over and whispered to ask if I’d heard something, etc. I knew it was a lost
cause then.

But about a half hour
into the stand, I sensed my son move. He seemed to be looking at something
through his scope but didn’t shoot so I finally relaxed. Just then, "Bang!"

“Bobcat?” I asked in a
whisper. “It was a cougar,” he said. My watch showed we’d been on stand 32
minutes. It loped into the far end of the swamp angling toward thick timber and
brush within 40 yards of us. My son knew he couldn’t see the cat if it got in
the cover so he shot when it paused at 125 yards.

He ran across the frozen
swamp ahead of us. When he war whooped we knew he’d hit a lion. Blood flecks
and hair marked the hit but only scarce tracks in patchy snow hinted where the
cat had entered the heavy old growth forest. From there it took 15 minutes of
slow circling to find the lion stretched out on the moss carpet 50 yards
farther. They are an exceptionally pretty animal. This one was a six year old
female and weighed 88 lbs.

What a prize to pack out
to the road. Having 3 generations along made it all the better. And Grandpa
got to use his knife.

I had driven approximately 30 miles of
snowy NW Washington USFS roads and seen NOTHING. As I backtracked my way home, I
cut a Mountain Lion track in my own tire tracks from 3 hours earlier. I followed
it around hills and ridges until I couldn't cut it again, and decided where it
had to have gone. (Probably a 30% chance of being correct.)

I geared up and hiked up the ridge
opposite of the last noted tracks. When I reached the top, I followed the ridge
until I found an area that provided a little bit of visibility. Not much, but
some, broken by trees, and occasional brush, 15 yards wide and probably 60 yards
long. I set the WT caller up in the downhill end of the opening, and climbed to
the uphill end and set up.

I called with a combination of distress,
female vocals, distress, male vocals, distress, and then young whistles for
approximately 15 minutes. It was during the series of whistles that I heard a
distinct male cougar bark/huff/wheeze from directly behind me. I hackled up but
maintained my stealth mode, surprisingly.

I got turned around and changed hands with
my rifle so I could point it to my rear. Very stressful, but I continued my
vigil and changed sounds quite a few times for the next hour, but never saw
anything.

At the end of the stand, I got up and
discovered, in the fresh snow, that the Lion had come to within 22 yards of my
rear, then veered to the right and circled around me and the opening I was set
up to watch. It stayed in the cover the whole way. It was circling around to my
right while I was turning around to my rear. From the tracks it appeared as if
it never stopped walking.

Again, hot tracks,
going in where it might have been going after circling a ridge. No shots fired,
but the Cougar Call-in was confirmed via tracks and a vocal response.

Here are the tracks of the cat when I found it on the
road out, it had sat for awhile looking down the road!

I was hunting the edge of the timber,
within 1/2 mile of the open sage/bitterbrush desert. Several groups of deer were
using the area as a bedding area. I set up in a lava rock channel with great
visual coverage and only my head was not hidden. I had a head net on to break up
my face.

The mouth call I was using is an old green
plastic jackrabbit distress call. I was attempting to make the sound that I
heard a mule deer doe make many years ago, as it was being killed by a cougar.
It is a loud 5-15 second long call that ends in mid scream.

I made this call then waited and watched
about 3 minutes then repeated and waited about 3 minutes. As I made the call the
third time I caught movement along a little rim about 250yds out. I got ready
and when the cat got to about 100yds and cleared the sagebrush for a shot, I
shot right into the hollow of its throat. The bullet hit just right of the
throat and skirted the outside of the ribs under the cats front left shoulder.

I waited for the cougar to die, but he did
not as the bullet never entered the chest cavity. After a few minutes of the cat
not dying, he started to get up. By then I was standing about 15yds away. I put
another bullet through both lungs and heart. The cat jumped up and ran about
80yds and I hit him again. The bullet hit the spine and rolled the cat.

Cat was checked in at bend ODFW at a
weight of 114lb with no guts and all blood shot meat removed from first shot.
Estimated live weight was around 150lbs and it was a 9yr old male.

Calling above a deer
wintering area is an EXCELLENT cold-calling strategy. Hand called, deer in the
throes of death sound. Cougar tagged.

Geared up and followed the tracks up the
ridge. They cut to the left, towards the main mountain range. I continued
straight up to the top of the ridge, watching for the tracks to cross back to
the right. They did, just before the top of the ridge. I continued on, and the
tracks crossed back the the left at the top of the ridge. Then just past the top
of the ridge, they crossed back to the left again. Less that 3 hour old tracks
had been all over that ridge!

I didn't know for sure what to do, but
since more tracks headed down the ridge than up the ridge, I just sat down and
set-up looking down the ridge.

I let the area settle down for a few
minutes then started in. I played one or two whistles on the WT, then about 30
seconds of cottontail distress, then went back to the whistles. I immediately
heard a hollow hooting sound from up the ridge. I thought it was a raven way,
way up the mountain. But in about 30 seconds I realized that the hooting sound
was getting louder and it was answering ever single whistle.

I thought, "UhOh! It's behind me and I'm
going to see it in a second here!" Sure enough, before I could do anything about
it, I saw it coming through the timber. I kinda gauged when I thought it would
be going through a low spot, and I wheeled my gun around to weak hand pointing
to my rear. It didn't work. The cat saw me and froze. I lost it, like it
disappeared. Poof! I tucked into the rifle and looked through the scope....
there it was, staring right at me!

I was busted, so I took a shot for the
nose. Missed, went through the whiskers, off the jaw, and into the shoulder.
Mortally wounded, I tracked it down over the next hour and finished it with
another shot to the lungs, 1/4 mile from the truck.

Again, hot tracks.
Called in with Whistles and Distress, under 2 minutes vocal response. Cougar
tagged.

We walked up an old grade from our family
camping spot towards a clear cut that just been put in. Our dogs were out in
front of the group (as always.) The next thing we know the dogs just loose it. A
fellow camper, the only one on a bike, takes a couple quick peddles ahead, and
see's the back half of a cougar jumping into the bushes.

We headed back to camp, and a friend and
I decided we'd try to call the cat back.

We got our gear and guns and walked past
where we had our first encounter, just out side the clear cut into the bigger
timber. We found a spot where log had fallen perfect for us to hide behind and
look two different directions.

I had with me a Carlton Calls, Critter
Gitter. It's an open reed call, very basic but I could do higher pitch
rabbit/fawn distress calls or I could do lower pitch doe distress calls. I
decided I was going to use a doe distress for this set up.

After about 25-30 min's of calling I hear
my friend whisper. "Ben.... Ben.... It's right there!" I'm looking all over.
Down on the road. all over. I whisper "Where?" He says "Right there!" and
points in the timber. I asked him how far. He says "20 yards. It's looking right
at me". I'm looking all over for this cat, and I still can't see it. Finally he
says, "Scoot over here". So I slowly crawled over next to him. He says, "Look
right between those two tree's right there." and points. I'm still not seeing
this cat. He tells me to scoot over even closer. Now I'm sitting in his lap. He
tells me to look in the same place. Now I could see the face of this cougar
looking at me from 20 yards.

I pulled the '06 up and looked at it
through the scope. I put the cross hairs right on the cat's face. I whispered
for Justin to plug his ears. As soon as I seen him plug his ears out the corner
of my eye I shot. That cat literally went 6 feet in the air. Did a complete 180
and took off on a dead run. We spent the next few minutes trying to compose
ourselves. We looked all over for blood. Nothing. We went back to camp to
recruit a posse for recovery. Six of us spent the next 2 hours looking all over.
We never found a single piece of hair, blood, nothing.

Sighting that turns a camping
trip into an impromptu Cougar Stand ends with a clean miss!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

O6Okanagan,
missed opportunity, NW Washington :

My son and I and cut a fresh cougar track
in a canyon where an inch of new snow was sticking in shady patches. We couldn’t
tell where the cougar left the road but we thought it went up hill so set up to
call it down. First mistake.

Son hid 50 yards above me where he could
cover the most likely places the cat would come from. I hid between some
deadfalls not far above the road and called with my Weems All Call. I didn’t
take a rifle. After 55 minutes of our planned hour, I decided to stand up and
scan around with binoculars since only my head would stick up when I stood, in
camo net.

When I quit calling and went up to him he
said an odd thing had happened five minutes before we quit. A large animal had
walked almost carelessly up through the salal just over a low ridge from him,
with squirrels chattering at it all the way up. Hmmmm… (My hearing is going and
I’d barely heard one squirrel.)

Down on the road 40 yards below where I’d
sat we found a fresh cougar track in the snow, made since we’d gone up to call.
It crossed the road and went up the hill in line with the low ridge my son had
heard the critter go up. There was no snow on the slope to track it further but
the direction it was going would have allowed it to peek at me over the low
ridge covered in salal, about 25 yards to my right. Apparently it came in,
watched me till I stood up, slunk back in the salal and went on uphill past him
but just out of his sight over the ridge. I don’t think the cat ever knew he
was there.

We don’t get many chances at cougars and I
hate it when we blow a good one.

They always come in
from uphill . . . except the rare times when they come in from downhill!
Confirmed with movement noise and tracks, no shot.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

O7 RainShadow
Call-In, NW Washington :

Good tracking snow, but I had almost
exhausted all my local roads without cutting a track. Finally, about 2 miles
from the end of the road, I cut a fresh Mountain Lion.

I geared up and followed it through the
thick timber along a steep, major alpine ridge, for about a mile until the
timber finally thinned down a little and the ridge started to round. I figured
it was good enough, so I set up. I set the call right in the trail and climbed
about 25 yards above the trail and hid under a tree.

I called on the WT for 30 min with various
distress, then 15 min with bobcat baby distress, then about 20 min with Female
Cougar Calls. Then I switched to the whistles. At the first whistle the Lion
called back to me from about 100 yards. It was a matching whistle followed by a
"Gurgle" growl.

5 minutes later it was in. 35 yards from
me. I had it in the scope, but I could only see it's front toes and it's nose
and whiskers. It saw the caller sitting in the trail where I'd placed it, and it
stopped. One step short of giving me a shot. I watched it through the scope for
over 3 minutes. It was head bobbing, looking here and there, trying to figure
out what to do. I was trying to imagine a hole in the timber to shoot through,
but couldn't do it. I decided to move my upper body to the left to possibly open
up a shooting lane, even an inch! Nothing... except my camo hood caught on a big
fir branch, and moved it with a pop and a shudder. The cat stepped back, I got a
flash of eyeball, then it whirled around and slithered silently away.
I was so shaken up I couldn't hang in more than another 15 minutes or so, then I
gave up!

Following a hot
track into the steep and deep pays off again! Called in with a long distress
series, then Female vocal, and Sub adult whistles. Confirmed with a vocal
response and 3 minutes in the scope.

(I had a cell phone pic of the tracks where it stood
behind the timber and scrub,

but I didn't have connectivity with that phone, so I
never got it on a computer.)

My nephew about 10 years ago was getting
him self in condition for a coming army reserve activity and he was running
several miles, partly through the timber. While running through the timber he
jumped a white tail fawn, it ran into the woods a short distance from him. The
brush started moving and he heard the fawn cry and a cougar jumped up on a tree
or stump with the fawn.

My nephew turned and ran down the hill, he
said after having ran several miles, he had no trouble jumping the barb wire
fence at the bottom of the hill.

A couple weeks or so later after getting
back from the reserves he went near the same area with his rifle and a call. I
don't know what brand of call he was using, I know he had a Critter call and I
believe a Circe. He got situated and started calling. He heard very shortly
something walking, he could then see the bottom half of a cougar at I believe
about 50 yards.

He shot and he heard the cat run off. He
couldn't find any blood or hair and assumed he missed. Opening day of deer
season a few days later he went back into the same area and found a dead cougar
secluded in some brush. The weather had been cool and the hide was still ok for
a rug. I would estimate a 100 pound or more cat.

To the best of my knowledge he was blowing
distress calls as he would for a coyote. I think that was his first year of
using a predator call.

Known area, cold
calling, but a known area results in a shot fired, and recovered trophy a few
days later. Cougar Tagged.

Opening day, I walked up an old grade to
my elk stand about 4pm. About 6pm I heard a weird noise... Thought it was a deer
but had never heard the noise before just like a snort hiss. About five minutes
later there was a scream . The sound was coming from the ridge above me and
about 70 yards to my left. The next scream was closer...and I knew it wasn't a
deer. It had to be a cougar. Now sounding about 30 yards away. I nocked an arrow
and stood up.

I didn't want to be walking out with a cat
sneaking around, so I took defensive measures and decided to switch to a Cougar
hunt! I brought the back of my hand to my lips and squeaked out a rabbit squeal
for about a 5 second session. The cat let a blood curdling scream... I squealed
again... silence for about 3 minutes. Then, from the top of the trail my stand
is on came a loud "MEOW."

OMG I thought. No one said they do
that!!! The cat was now about ten yards from me, and out of sight. I watched
for movement.... Finally she walked down my trail and into the stand of trees
just 5 yards below me. My 20 yard pin wouldn't do, I had to be sure of a hit so
I drew back and brought the nock of the arrow up to my eye and looked down the
shaft. As soon as the cat stepped clear of the trees I released the arrow!

The cat crouched as if to jump towards me
but the arrow struck it right between the shoulder blades ! Two backwards summer
salts, then it leapt away. I saw my arrow fletches sticking out its back ....WOW
was I excited!

I sat down and listened for a few minutes!
After an hour I tracked it but lost the trail so I went back to camp.

On the way back the cats tracks were in my
tracks on the old grade.

My husband returned to camp way after
dark, and we decided to wait, and track the cat in the morning.

The next day we retrieved the cat with the
use of our Primos blood trailing light.

The cat was 6'2"

Take that, fellers! This great
young lady takes a "HAND" called Cougar with a Bow!!! Cougar Tagged!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

O10RainShadow
Call-In, NW Washington :

No snow, there had been 3 weeks earlier, a
lot! But now it was all gone. I was at about 4000 feet with bare ground in the
timber. I hiked up the side of a ridge, to the top, about 1/2 mile from a rugged
mountain, mostly 500ft cliffs and other huge rock outcroppings. This was a known
crossing for Cougar and lots of other game.

I set-up and called with the WT for at
least 20 minutes, using several distress sounds, the Sub Adult whistles, and
then finally switching to the male communicative huff/barks.

A few minutes into them I heard a familiar
vocal response from 200 yards above me. It was the whistle ending in the Gurgle.
A minute later I heard it again, from the same area. I monkeyed with the sounds
and watched 'til my eyes ached for another 40 min. Then I made this video clip
with my little point and shoot camera...

...Then I called for another 40 minutes.
Never saw anything. I don't know if it had come in, I missed it and it was
leaving, or if it called first then came in and I never saw it, or if it called
from above and never came in. But I never saw it.

Sure wish I had my new RS sounds on that
stand. I think the WT sounds may have been too aggressive for that cat.

Exciting/Discouraging. Cold call in a known crossing area, confirmed by vocal
responses.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

O11
NPHA Member JimAinAZ :

I started out running a Coyote Stand in
the higher pines, and called nothing but a Mule Deer doe. I had muted the call
and was ready to quit when, in the distance, I could hear something that sounded
to me like an African lion "huff" I'd heard on TV. I figured it was worth some
more effort on my part, so over the next several minutes I offered up a variety
of different sounds that included prey distress and coyote vocalizations. I have
some lion vocalizations on my caller but didn't use any of them fearing I might
send the wrong message.

I wasn't hearing anything anymore, and had
decided to end the stand after a few minutes of silence. Just as I was taking my
last look around a lion magically appeared about 10 feet from the call. I
believe the words "Oh my God" passed my lips and then instinct took over. Thru
the magnifier on my AR I watched as he stretched out his neck to reach up and
sniff the caller and squeezed off the shot. It was a good frontal chest hit and
the lion jumped about 6 feet into the air and hit the ground running back toward
the canyon. At about 90 yards he offered a good broadside opportunity and I hit
him again thru the lungs. He rolled over a log and I couldn't see him anymore.

I thought about sitting for a few minutes,
then remembered how he just appeared and decided I didn't want him just
disappearing so I stood up, shouldered my rifle and advanced toward the last
place I had seen him. I got to where I could see him stretched out over the top
of the log and his chest was still. Took a few more steps and still no movement
and finally got close enough to poke him in the eye with my rifle barrel, no
reaction. It was at this point that I started shaking and my breathing became
erratic.

At check in, the AZGFD biologist aged him
at 18-19 months and described him as a transient. Even though he was young, he's
still my best trophy to date and that includes any of the stuff I have hanging
on my walls. I hope everybody gets an opportunity to feel the rush of having a
lion show up on a stand some day. It's a feeling I know I'll never forget.

Coyote stand turns into a Lion
stand when a vocal response is heard. Tactics applied immediately, and it paid
off! Cougar tagged.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

O12Elks
in Colorado, Hand Called into his lap!

I worked my way into some real rocky and
thick covered canyon country. About two years ago I went on a hike up this
canyon and found lion sign. I decided to try for a lion.

Second stand of the day, I was going to
call the Pinion and Junipers, and the big rocks. I set up in a little narrow
steep canyon. It was pretty thick covered with Pinions and junipers. The canyon
I chose to call ran from east to west was maybe 150 yards wide and was about 100
yards deep and man was it steep. I set up on the north side. I could see the
other side real well and down my right hand side for about 200 yards. My left
hand side was a different story. In the thick cover I could only see about 20
yards. I hoped that something from that direction would go high or low around
me. The wind was variable in direction but constant at approximately 5 mph.

I started calling like I always do. I was
using a sceery rabbit distress. I called often, in short little bursts.

About 15 minutes into the stand I was half
way through a breath in the call when I caught movement in the corner of my eye.
I turned slowly to see what it was, expecting a bob cat. I was extremely
surprised when it turned out to be a lion, and real close! It took me just a
split second to get the gun around, but it seemed like for ever. I can still
clearly see the big cat all crouched up plotting its next move. Its tail slowly
flicking behind and its cold yellow eyes fixed on me.

I swung the gun up and found the center of
its chest. Bang, the cat leaped 6 plus feet straight up and hit the ground with
a thud. It was dead before ever reached the ground. Needless to say I was real
shook up. The next 15 minutes I was Shaking and managed to walk in several small
circles around where I was sitting not really sure what to do. Man was I freaked
out.

After I calmed down I got the courage to
approach the lion. The shot hit right at the top of the chest white patch and
went through the throat and into the spine. I also managed to step off where I
was and where the cat was when I shot. I got in 8 paces, which is just too
close!

At this Call-In, Elks was a
first time Cougar caller, but a very experienced predator hunter, and Colorado
big game hunter. He did everything right, set-up in a known Lion area, and was
able to make it happen when the big cat materialized breathing down his neck!
Lion Tagged.

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O13
BearManRic, of RR Game Calls, and his first called Cougar story:

My first cougar call-in was in 1993. Back
then my favorite call was the Haydel Government Cottontail. I had seen several
cougar in the road that year.

I hunted a gated road right close to the
Olympic National Park. I went in to a 4 way intersection on the closed road. I
parked my mountain bike and walked the grade to the left till I came to a long
straightaway. I knew a grade to the right was about 50 yards ahead of me. I got
settled in with my back to a small tree.

As soon as I started calling, a cougar
start chirping very close on the other side of the road. It was well under a 100
yards. I kept calling but at lower volume. It only chirped a few more times. At
around 40 minutes it glided across the road, too quick to shoot, and into the
scrub on my side of the road. A 6 year old clear cut. Heavy brush.

It was a slender, average sized cougar. A
younger one I think.

I started calling again, and went for
another 15 minutes or so... nothing. Then I got nervous. There was a elk trail
there where I was expecting to see a cougar ready to pounce on me. So I gave it
up and backed out of there.

Rick lost this
Cougar in the "Dog Hair." If you've never seen "re-prod" in the Pacific
Northwest, you might not understand! There's a reason they call it "Dog Hair!"
(You're very, very lucky to see 5 yards into it, it's so thick.) Call-in
confirmed with vocal responses and a sighting, but no shot.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

O14Okanagan,
Calling the Washington State snow country :

My
son and I found a recent cougar track angling across a logging road in patchy
snow. We drove and hiked to set up ahead of its line of travel. We placed our
boom box in a frozen swamp and sat a few yards on opposite sides of it. I poked
the start button on the CD player and moved to my hiding spot. The CD was a
recording of me blowing a Weems All Call.

14
minutes after we started calling my son saw a large animal move at the edge of
the swamp about 60 yards from him. It was about 45 degrees from where he was
looking and it moved behind a bush before he could focus on it.

50
minutes into the calling stand, two ravens were flying over and when they got
above the spot where he’d seen movement earlier, they started diving at
something behind a bush and squawking at it. Whatever it was moved away with
the ravens hassling it all the way, and one squirrel after another picked up the
scolding as it moved off through the timber.

At 65
minutes we quit calling, exchanged info and walked straight to the bush where my
son had seen movement and the ravens had focused.

Tracks in the snow told the story. A cougar had walked to a four foot wide
opening at the edge of the swamp where it stopped and looked toward the call
sound. My son was sitting in a direct line between the lion and the caller.
When he moved his head slightly to look at the lion, it jumped sideways behind a
bush and lay down. It left a full body print in the snow where it lay for 36
minutes and watched him, till the ravens started hassling it and it walked off
into the timber.

I had one come up to 18 yards and laid down
behind me, but I was unaware until I walked out and read the tracks. He had cut
my tracks at 50 yards and walked in my boot
prints to 18 yards and laid down. It made me feel like a big rat! The
funny thing is, it was the very first stand, the very first time, that I
specifically targeted a lion, and boy did it leave a lasting impression! I think
it is very neat that they seem to frequently end up behind you. The sign of a
true predator... and a stealthy one at that!

I saw one and never got a shot.
I had finished calling and walked over to a rock ledge
very close to where I was sitting and a lion came jumping out from below me on
the rock ledge. I was unable to get my rifle to my shoulder and get a shot
before the lion disappeared. A bad judgment call on my part to get up and leave
as soon as I did. I think that in a few minutes he would have been in sight, I
should have been more persistent and set longer.

The third
one same as the first, we cut his tracks when we were walking out.

An old hunting buddy came up to the
place earlier this week and wanted me to call in a bear for him so we took off
in my jeep up to the start of a old skid road that lead up to a 8 yr old
clear-cut on a step hill.

I decided to take my bow since he
carried his 300 win mag in case of a elk or nice buck showed up. Once we reached
the clear-cut both of us sat down and started to watch for any activity. About
two minutes into this I thought I heard a cow elk talking so I pulled out my
diaphragm call and gave a couple of cow calls but no response. I thought maybe I
just mistook some bird call for a elk. After about thirty more minutes of
sitting at the lower edge of the clear-cut and not seeing much it was time to
move into a calling spot for bears.

After walking further up the skid
road I just happened to look up the road and a cougar walks across the road and
into the brush about 60 feet ahead of us. I tell my buddy and we go up to where
it crossed and start scanning the hillside, my buddy spots it on the hillside
about 70 yrds away and points it out to me, the cat was going thru the fairly
thick brush but could catch a glimpse of it every now and again.

We started talking about what a great
surprise that was when all of a sudden about 15 feet behind us a cougar comes
out of the brush and scrambles across a old log in the road, I give chase to try
to tree it but I guess the cat figured I was a 204 lb weakling and so wasn’t
intimated in the least .

After cleaning ourselves up a bit
after that encounter we figured that the 1st cat I saw had crossed the road and
was crouched down in the thick brush just off the road all the time we were
standing there.

I remembered that the Foxpro had some
cougar sounds on it so we set up to try to call in one of the cats. The call
ended up exactly 51 yrds from where we decided to sit but at a somewhat steep
downward angle. I couldn’t find a better spot without exposing ourselves in the
clear-cut. I found a sound called a cougar whistle so I played it once
(realizing that was what I had mistook earlier for a cow elk) and also got a
immediate answer from 2 different locations on the hillside where we glimpsed
the one earlier going thru the brush. So now we had three cougars in the area
that we knew of.

I used the cougar whistle several
times over a twenty minute period and got responses back that were closer each
time. After about the thirty five minute mark using the whistle wasn’t getting a
response and I was wondering if they might be near the call but just crouched
down and watching, kinda like what a bobcat does. I tried a sound called
cougar in heat, immediately a cat came screaming and growling out of the road
it’s ears laid back and was eyeing my Foxpro like “what the heck is this”? The
cat was so intent on the Foxpro I stood up and pulled back, put the 50 yrd pin
right behind its shoulder and watched the arrow as it sailed 1 inch over it’s
back.

We called some more but nothing else
came in. I went and retrieved my arrow and let my bud give me a hard kick in the
ass. When we finally settled down I told him that I really didn’t mind that much
about missing since bringing home a cougar would have only been a small part of
a overall great experience! He was in total agreement. I think I'm now hooked on
calling cats, and may have found this winter’s sport!

Big10 is a very experience hunter and
predator caller. He set up right and responded to a surprise opportunity as good
as anyone else could have. Some really good insights are hidden in this account.
Especially how he got the cat to show itself when it was already in, but hiding,
by playing an aggressive sound (heat.) So Close!

I had been watching this area for a few years and had known it to have a lot of cougar activity, especially after hunters start pushing the cats around. I had a scouting camera up in it for most of the month of Dec. and got some great pics of a gorgeous collared lion right around Christmas.

Earlier in the year I had decided that I wanted to call in this area and hung a tree stand. The cover in the area is so thick that I ended up using a chainsaw to cut several shooting lanes out up to 50-60 yards, but made sure that my stand was still concealed.

For the first six days of the season I had focused on a different lion that I had located on opening day. I had found a kill that it had dragged across the road. I set up on this kill first with a tree stand and then with a blind. I tried calling a couple times and also tried just sitting on the kill a couple times. I had several sets of tracks coming in and around the kill but seemed to always come in at night. I have several pics of the lion feeding on the kill too but they were all at night too. The kill ended up being cashed and the lion seemed to have left the area so I changed my plan of attack to other areas and stands.

I woke up early on Jan 7th got ready and jumped in the pickup to head out for my morning set before going out to check my trapline. The wind was blowing pretty hard and the temps were in the low 20's so decided to go to the stand that I had set up earlier in the year.

I tiptoed through the crunchy sunbaked snow on the way into my stand trying to make as little noise as possible. I placed my E-caller in a thick downed tree, right below and about six yards from my tree stand. I climbed into my stand and after tying myself in and getting situated, double checked all of my yardages while I waited for enough light to start calling. I started calling with a distress sound and switched it to a similar but different one about a minute later. I hadn't been calling but 2-3 minutes and there it was, a cougar, she was quickly moving through the thick timber and stopped in one of my shooting lanes. It sat on its haunches at 40 yards and stared in the direction of the caller for a minute or so. Then she started to move towards my right and creep in closer. I made sure to draw my bow while she was moving and not looking towards me. As she stepped into a a shooting lane at 30 yards she stopped quartering a little towards me. I placed the pin just behind her shoulder, steadied the shot and let it fly. I hit my target and she jumped straight up in the air. She slowly walked out of sight and I texted a couple buddies and one of them said they would come back me up as I tracked it.

Knowing better than to go directly after an animal I found my arrow and saw that there was a good blood trail showing in the snow so I decided to go back to my pickup and wait for my buddy to come help. When he showed up he was pretty excited and wanted to go look for it right away. I told him that we needed to wait a little longer. Reluctantly agreeing we waited.

We soon got on the track and worked our way closer to the cat. The brush in the draw was getting really thick. About eighty yards from where I had shot it we caught movement to our right and the cat took off through the brush. I started to become afraid that we were going to end up chasing it through the brush for a couple miles. We pressed further and saw that the cat only went a couple yards and was not doing so well. I found a small hole through the thick brush and shot it again. This quickly finished her and there she was. My first cougar with a bow and I did it without dogs. I was STOKED! We took some great photos and after checking it in at the Game & Fish I found out that it is the first cougar ever shot with a bow in the state of South Dakota since the reopening of the mountain lions seasons six years ago.

She was an 80lb 6' 3yr old healthy female with a gorgeous coat and beautiful face.

Sean and I talked a few times about strategy,
and the current Mountain Lion situation in SD a week or so before he took this
cat. As you can tell from his narrative, he's a meticulous and hard driving
hunter who earned his trophy! Way to go, Sean!

O18:
CW North Dakota

Sept 2013 I had guys working for me in the ND badlands
and on separate occasions they each saw a lion in the same general area. I had
been trying to get a lion for several years and figured this would be a good
spot to start.

I had not used my FP much, and had it sitting just in
front of me so I could get it should I need to. I had started with deer in
distress and then switched to lion vocals, ending with lion in heat.

I had sat for 45 min and decided to try a new spot. I
got up and grabbed my FP. I turned to go back to my truck and looked straight
into the eyes of a lion standing 15- 20 yards away. The lion just stared at me
and did not move at all. I pulled up and shot him straight on with a TC encore
in 280 Rem. He piled up within a few yards.

I sure had the shakes after the shot wondering how long
he was standing behind me. This lion weighed 131 lbs and had been collared south
of Malta MT. This lion had traveled 235 straight line miles to ND!

I went on to see two other lions that season, not by
calling though. One let me walk within 50 yards of it before it ran. I am
anxious to see how this season goes. It makes a person a little nervous
calling knowing how sneaky they are and that they don't seem to have much fear
of you.

CW sent me some interesting stuff on this
collared cat...

Heading describes this photo.

Map is not real clear here, but this is the meanderings of the cat for a
couple weeks before CW shot it.

Some interesting information on cats, including this one that CW killed.

Thanks "CW" for this great story and
information!!!

O19: Dead Battery!!! Washington Hunter "Jasnt"

I found some fresh lion tracks today. I
followed what I could till I found an area where I could call and still kinda
see( everything was super thick and steep!) I found a good spot to hide and pull
out my e caller..............dead! Won't even turn on. So I pull out couple hand
calls and try to tuck in the brush a little more and start with fawn distress
pausing every 30 sec or so to listen. After a bit I hear a whistle about 150
yards up the hill, Then another one about 200 yards to my right. They talk back
and forth a a few times with the second one getting a little closer. Then I do
another set and I hear one last whistle so I do it back best I can with my
voice. All quiet! After a few mins I hear this gargley cough sound just fifty
yards away. I scan the area with just my eyes but just couldn't see in that
area(thick firs) I sat there for a long time still as death but after a while I
heard something leaving.

Charge your batteries!!!Great stand and great encounter! Hand calling is SO tough,
because THEY WILL SEE YOU!!!

O20: Treekiller
- WA...

A friend and I used fawn in distress calls
with his FoxPro 2 winters ago. I'd been shed hunting in mid February and found
numerous lion tracks in mud and snow, and eventually a fresh kill. We went in at
mid morning and set up in the area. He had a view below and up the ridge, and I
had a view below and down the ridge. We were 25-30 yards apart and I had a doug
fir against my back with thick brush behind me.

After about 40 minutes I noticed something brown move down the ridge, and at
first glance I thought it was a deer since doe's often respond to fawn in
distress calls. After maybe 10 seconds of watching I saw the long tail flick,
and immediately knew it was a lion. I only had to move my rifle a few inches to
have it lined up and the scope to my eye. My friend started the call again and
the lion moved about 5 yards and cleared the brush giving me a shot. He was a 5
yr old 170 # tom. The heaviest pack I hauled out of the woods!

O21: Okanagan - BC... Cougar growled at me

A cougar growled at me one evening when I
picked up the e-caller and decoy after an hour on a calling stand.

I had hiked a couple of hundred yards from
a logging road, up a steep bank to gain a backdoor access to a quarter mile wide
basin. It is a shallow bowl set into a huge mountainside, tilted with the low
western edge dropping off in a steep bank to a road below. The basin itself is
clearcut with big timber all around. It is an exceptionally rough clearcut,
extra bad for walking, and was made worse by two inches of soapy slick coastal
snow barely at freezing temps.

I placed the electronic call and decoy on a
flat spot beside a line of thick brush and logging debris that marked a small
stream coursing down through the middle of the basin. Then I backed off 75 yards
to a line of Christmas trees on the south rim of the bowl and sat facing north,
looking over the bowl. The brush along the stream ditch gave a cat cover near
the e-caller, but snow patches all around it gave me hope that I would see any
cougar before it reached the cover.

After an hour it was too dark to see a
cougar anywhere except on the more open snow patches, all of which were peppered
with stumps and brush. I got up and walked carefully down the rough slick ground
to pick up the e-caller. When I was a step from the call and starting to bend
down to pick it up, a cat snarled to my right, less than 40 feet from me. The
sound came from the brushy stream ditch where a pile of logging debris 8 feet
high was grown up in brush as well. The sound startled me and I straightened,
not yet registering what it was, and then it snarled again, louder.

Yep, that sound prompts adrenaline rush and
skin spikes.

It was more snarl than growl. It started
with a medium loud owl-like hoo that morphed seamlessly without any stop in the
sound into a classic cat snarl that got louder and drawn out a bit. It sounded
like a deeper version of an alley cat threatening a rival that he was looking
at. The second time it was all snarl, kind of growly at the end.

My guess is that the cat, a cougar, had
sneaked close to the e-caller without me seeing it and was sitting there
watching it unaware that a man was looking on from 75 yards away. When I got up
and approached, the cat watched until I started to pick it up. Then he voiced
his displeasure, probably because he considered the call and decoy his prey and
he did not like anyone taking it away from him.

I tried to see him of course to no avail.
If the footing had not been so bad I would have circled to look for tracks in
the snow with a flashlight, but at my age it was not worth the effort.

Third Category:

Accidental "Surprise!" Call-Ins!

A1 Hunting-Washington
member "Missing," Central Washington Cascades:

So on New Years day my son and I were
working on our house, and about mid afternoon we decided to go out and do a
quick set for coyote or bobcat, it was about 2:30 so we knew we would only have
time for 1 or 2 setups.

200 yards from the truck, we dropped off
the road about 20 yards and set up looking north were we could see about 150
yards through scattered timber. My son set up against a good sized fir tree and
I set up against a small blow down we were about 25 yds apart. I set my fox pro
and mojo critter in a small opening about 20 yds in front of me. This looked
like a real nice place to set up. We had good visibility, some thick brush for
bobcats on both sides in the bottom of the draw and about 6" of fresh snow from
earlier that day. I looked at my watch and it was 3:45 so I new we would only
have time for that one set.

I did 3 sets of howls about 1 minute apart
and waited. Several deer moved out of the brush below us and moved off quickly.
I turned the fox pro on to a rabbit distress and let it go for about 5 minutes.
Then I changed to a higher pitched rabbit call and let it run for about 5
minutes.

I was just ready to change sound again and
did a last sweep of the area and nothing yet, as I looked to my right something
told me I needed to look behind me. I slowly turned my head, and sitting on the
edge of the road is a lion! Just 17 yards away! From the angle I am fairly sure
he was looking over my shoulder at the mojo critter.

I slowly turned back around and got my
sons attention to look up the hill, but from his angle he could not see the cat
because it was behind a tree. As I turned around again he was now focused on me
because of all of the movement. I knew it would be a good idea to have the
business end of the rifle pointed in his direction as I am sure he was looking
for a late afternoon snack. I think he figured that I was bigger than what he
had heard screaming and stood up wheeled around and headed back into the timber
following his own tracks.

As I stood up my son says, "What was it?"
I said, "It was a lion!" He gave me that 'yeah right' look. (You know the one
your kids give you). So we both headed up the hill to the road still about 20
yds apart. I went right to where the cat was crouched and my son came down the
road and met me there. Low and behold, a fresh set of cat tracks! That is the
first time I have called in a lion, and wouldn't you know... it was 1 day after
the season closed! But still a great day of calling

This won't be the last "sitting
behind me" story, I assure you!

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A2Weasel,
of weaselbrandgamecalls.com, a couple of Night Hunts:

I was on my way home from a family
barbeque. It was in the early 1970's. I had my wife and two small kids with me.
Of course I had my rifle, a Ruger Model 77 chambered in 22-250. I also had a
spotlight and my predator calls. I decided that since I was driving through some
prime predator country that I would squeeze in a couple of quick stands. The
kids were asleep and I knew that even if I shot right next to the car they
wouldn't wake up.

I stopped in a likely looking spot for
bobcats. I started my usual series on the Circe handcall. It had originally been
voiced as a cottontail, but I tuned a reed to get a little deeper, but much
raspier sound.

After several series on the call I picked
up a set of eyes in the spotlight. At first the animal was too far away to
identify it. It strolled in at a fairly consistent pace only stopping
occasionally for a few seconds before proceeding toward me. At some point
between 100 and 200 yards I started thinking I had a lion coming in, but still
wasn't sure it wasn't a curious deer. Once it got within 100 yards I could
clearly see that it was indeed a lion.

At one point 50 to 75 yards away the lion
sat down. I held the cross-hair on the middle of it's chest and squeezed the
trigger. The lion jumped skyward and nearly flipped over backward. It gained
it's feet and ran back the way it had come in. Now the very stupid
part...........I didn't have a flashlight. My wife held the spotlight for me as
I walked out to see if I could find the cat. I couldn't.

I took off work the next day and went back
to where I had shot the lion. I found hair and tracks, but no blood. It was
rocky terrain and I followed the tracks as far as I could. I spent most of the
day inspecting every likely travel route or hiding spot the cat may have taken
or been in. I never found that cat.

Another night hunt in the early 70's. This time I was with my cousin. We were
calling in a similar area as the first cat, but we were over 50 miles away from
the first spot. I was using the same Circe call. This lion came in nearly the
same way the first lion did. The difference was that the hillside this cat was
on was more open and the cat stopped at over 100 yards out. I knew it would be a
chip shot and took it.

This lion dropped and started rolling down
the hill. I thought for sure it was stone dead. All of a sudden the cat was up
and running along the side of the hill. I didn't get a shot off before the cat
made cover. We didn't find any evidence of a hit, but I know I hit it.

I was shooting Sierra 55 grain Varmiters
out of my 22-250. I suspected at that point that I wasn't using enough bullet.

After Saturday evening's deer hunt we
decided to make a couple calling stands before going to bed. This deer lease is
bowhunting only until December for deer (the lease members made this rule it is
not state law). After I suggested we go calling, my buddy said "Fine, but you
have to use your bow". I said, "Whatever it takes!" and we drove to a familiar
area where we have called before.

After getting situated in the back of the
truck, I set my E-call on top of the truck and turned it on. It blinked low
battery and died instantly. Since the other guys had their hands full, I was
forced to call and shoot. I figured we would be lucky to get a predator into bow
range, much less shoot it but we had to try.

After just two minutes of calling my
light man tapped me on the shoulder. Something was coming in. I handed him the
call, and picked up my bow, ready to shoot whatever stepped out. I heard him
whisper, "Its a cat, It's a cat!" The adrenaline began to flow as I thought how
awesome it would be to shoot a bobcat with a bow on camera. We lost the eyes in
the brush and he quickly panned the light back and forth until we saw a cat step
out at 10yds. Nick's voice cracked as he said "It's a lion!"

I quickly came to full draw, but just
before I could shoot it turned back into the brush leaving me at full draw. My
camera guy whispered, "Get the gun!" The gun was unloaded and in the front seat
of the truck. I hopped out of the truck and a chill went down my back as I
scrambled to load the gun and climb back into the back of the truck.

At this point the cat had made it to 75yds
and was in the thickest brush you have ever seen. The light man continued to
call for 45min and the cat finally came 5 ft closer. I rested the 22-250 on his
shoulder and found the glowing eyes in the light. He said "You better shoot,
he's had enough." Putting the crosshairs between the eyes I tried to get steady
for the most important shot of my life. As the crack of the rifle echoed up and
down the river, I thought I heard the smack that every hunter hopes for.

We walked into the brush armed with a 9mm
and a tiny hat light, and we were both nervous as heck. The brush was so thick
we couldn't see 3yds in front of us. We finally saw hair and a long tail and the
celebration began.

It was a female cat, shot right in the
eye. I cannot begin to express how grateful and excited I am right now. I am
23yrs old and have come to the realization that there is a good chance I will
never see, much less shoot a mountain lion again.

Now THAT was a great surprise
Call-in! Gotta love Texas!

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A4PM
member Jitterbug, an unrealized sighting in CO :

We started out the stand with Jackrabbit
in distress and gave the Coyotes 15 or so minutes. My buddy was designated
camera man and had gotten some footage of the previous Coyote. Unbeknownst to
the shooters, the camera man saw “something” crossing in front of him about 200
yards out, so he quickly got the video into action. As usually happens he only
saw the critter for a few seconds before it walked behind a good sized Pinion
tree and, expecting it to come out the other side, he readied the camera and
patiently video’d but it never came out the other side.

At the end of the stand, skeptical and not
sure of what he’d just seen, the camera operator quickly showed the video in
playback mode to our partner, who quickly dismissed it as a Coyote. I didn’t
even bother to look at it assuming he’d seen an uncooperative Coyote, and was
anxious to get in another two or three stands so we could call one in for our
new hunter who hadn't ever taken one.

We went on to make another two stands and
noted there was surprisingly little Coyote sign in the area, which we would have
easily seen with the 4” of fresh snow.
The last stand was one of my never fails stands, it always produced, this time
we called 30 minutes up until dark and only produced an owl.

Later that night in the motel, the camera
man, still wondering what he’d seen and videoed, showed me the video on the
little camera screen, I quickly glanced at the poor quality video and dismissed
it as a deer.

Several days later, my camera man calls
and excitedly tells me the mystery critter in the video is a lion, I’m somewhat
skeptical. But he had hooked the camera up to his wide screen TV and he said
without a doubt it was a lion. He came over last night and hooked it up to my
TV, yep, no doubt about it. Even though it’s 175-200 yards out, there is no
mistaking the characteristics of Mountain Lion, I can tell by the size of the
vegetation, it’s a large one, and it appears to be a large Tom.

We had worked hard, drove far and made
around 15 stands in two days, so calling in just the one Coyote was a little
disappointing, especially when you have an out of state hunter and want to
produce for him, but we enjoyed the hunt, the beautiful country and good
camaraderie, and the uninvited guest in the video made for a very pleasant
surprise!

My regular partner and I made a stand for
coyotes in N. AZ. I was running Utah Jack, sound #233 on my Foxpro. We didn't
see anything and I called the stand off after 20-30 minutes.

Walking back to the truck my partner
spotted lion tracks on the trail we had walked in on. My partner is an expert
tracker so he decided to see where this lion had come from and where he had
gone.

He found tracks in our tracks so we knew
the lion had come in while we were calling. He followed the tracks to a spot
right behind where I was sitting. The cat had snuck in and snuck away without us
ever knowing it was there.

Funny thing is....my partner carries a
camera and seldom if ever carries a gun. I was the only one with a gun on that
stand. It turns out that the cat had come out of a rugged canyon that was behind
us. After walking up behind me the cat made a loop and went back down into the
same canyon.

Still not the last "sitting
behind me" story...

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A6
Krustyklimber, Washington State :

I was calling in the snow, without
worrying who might show up, and found cougar tracks over my own, when I got up
to leave, where I was "followed" to where I sat, and was "watched" from 10 yards
or so away.

It terrifies me, the way these two cougars didn't cut and run (like
a bear or coyote might), and how both came from behind on my wind and scent
trail.

Very typically "Catty" behavior... Are they a threat,
or are they not a threat?!?!? What we know is, they're Cats!

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A7
NPHA Member DAA, on 4 Call-Ins he's had while Coyote hunting :

Never saw it. The tracks say it walked up
behind us during the stand and sat about ten yards behind my partner for awhile
before walking away. Just like with coyotes, I wish there was some way of
knowing how many we have called in but will never know about.

Over the last several years, that one
(picture of tracks) , and three others that were seen, all came to the Foxpro
playing the same jackrabbit distress sound. Two sat on their haunches out in
front of us at slam dunk range - would have been EASY kills. The third did not
come any closer than about 400 yards and was fidgeting around quite a bit, I'm
not sure I would have even taken that shot even if I had a tag.

All were while trying to call coyotes. All
in mixed Pinion/Juniper and Sage terrain. And of course, because they came in on
coyote stands, all came in within less than 10 minutes.

Who knows how many
would have come in at 20 minutes! Great pic, thanks!

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A8Okanagan,
Whitetail Hunting Call-in :

A friend and I were rattling for
whitetails in a foggy dawn when a cougar came in to the sound. We had set up on
a flat of scattered brush surrounded by timber. Old patchy snow lay on grassy
strips that wandered between islands of waist high buck brush. The snow had
melted and frozen so many times it was crunchy hard and covered a half inch deep
with crystal hoarfrost flakes. A mouse couldn’t move silently on the snow
patches.

Several minutes into our stand I heard something big walk a step or two on the
snow out to my left front. This went on with long pauses of silence, a large
animal edging closer. I kept straining to see a buck in the fog. My partner
caught my eye and pointed silently at the sound. He heard it also.

It came to the nearest patch of
brush, stayed silent awhile and retreated the way it had some, slightly faster
and quieter on the retreat. By this time a half hour had oozed by. We kept
calling till the 45 minute mark and then walked to the location of the nearest
sound. Fresh cougar tracks in the hoarfrost showed his approach and retreat.
He’d come within 40 feet.

Thanks for that,
Okanagan, it's good to get one of those stories. You hear so often of them
coming in to turkey calling, elk calling, and deer calling...

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-

A924hourcampfire
member macrabbit, Central California:

I went up into the hills today to verify
some zeros before the trip, stopped at a favorite spot to call up a coyote. I
squallered for something less than a minute, and then within thirty seconds I
had a cougar at twenty feet. And the only reason it stopped there was because I
waved my hands and spoke to it.

I'd thought at first that it was one of
the occasional bobcats that come in, but got myself corrected quickly. It came
in at a steady walk, not particularly intent. It didn't seem to really see me
until my movements. I was in blue jeans and green shirt, sitting against an oak
trunk in a sea of dried wild oats.

So it stopped and just stood there looking
at me while I made conversation (and unlimbered my .45, just in case). But then
its ears went flat and it sank down two inches! At that I stood up and said some
nasty things to it. It still just stood there, twenty dang feet away. I wasn't
quite comfortable with the situation, so I dumped a .45 a few feet behind it.
Not much reaction, but it began to amble away at an angle. I sent another round
under its tail to reinforce my position, and at that it left at a slow trot. I
followed it, at a sane distance, and made sure that it was gone for good.

Kinda ruined my coyote setup, though.

I'm no expert, but I'm thinking that it
wasn't a full-grown specimen. And it sure wasn't roly-poly fat. I guess it, too,
has noticed that our deer population isn't what it once was.

Thanks so much for that story,
macrabbit! Ever wonder how they'll react when you want them to leave?
Well....... !!!

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- - - - - -

A10 24hour
Campfire Member Keith, Baja Mexico:

A friend and I were down in Baja Mexico at
the Bay of Los Angles calling coyotes in 1989. We stopped at a trash dump
outside of town and made a decision to make a stand to see if we could call some
in.

I had made a portable remote control electronic caller, and we put the
caller out about 35 yards away. My partner and I carved ourselves a small place
to put our stools to sit on in the edge of bushes, then I turned on the call.

About 9 Minutes into the call, I was getting frustrated because we had not
seen a predator of any kind and the area was loaded with them. We continued to
sit, and I heard my partner yell, "LION"! I looked up to see a big lion swap
ends and start walking back the way he had come. I could see his tail twitching
above the desert bushes.

I walked over to my partner ready to wrap my gun around his neck, when I
realized that it was illegal for us to take the lion in the first place...he was
visibly shaken by having the lion within 15' of him coming straight to him. It
took him about a day for his nerves to settle down.

You never know what is going to come in when you start blowing a varmint
call.

You ain't kiddin'! Read on...

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A11
NPHA
member cmiddleton, Wyoming.

My brother set me up with a ranch hand
preacher whos name is Steve. He has been asking my brother to take him out and
teach him to call coyotes. My brother told him he would have me do it as I'm the
most dedicated caller he knows.

I stopped by his house on Thursday night
to meet him and see if we could locate some with howls. We howled from the barn
and sure enough we got some responses from across the creek. We planed to set up
on the coyotes in the morning.

I met him at daylight, and we walked up
the creek. We set up on the fence line planning on pulling the coyotes out into
the open with howls and a rizzo decoy I named "Max."

I opened up with a locate lone howl, no
answer. I tried female invitations on the fox pro. Nothing. Then I went to pup
in distress for 20 minutes, still nothing. Well the night before the coyotes
never answered until I used the challenge, so I started challenging on my tally
ho, and mixed in some rabbit with the little green reaper call.

All of a sudden I got two loud long
grrroughs then a cough, like "gruf" "gruf" "gruf" repeated every 3 or 4 seconds.
The lion came through the brush and looked at Max, and then turned and left,
still doing the cough "gruf's" the whole time.

No tag and closed season.

No coyotes came in or sounded off, so the
hunt was a bust, but it was still one of my most thrilling of my life... one
I'll never forget!

I called to Max, but he is one spoiled
coyote... he never comes when I call him, and he makes me carry him back to the
truck every time to boot!

A11b
(cmiddleton, again) Back in 91 or 92, I had a rancher call and want me to knock
down some coyotes where his sheep were grazing. He had lost 14 head in one
night.

I went in well before day light and tried
to locate the coyotes with the howler, no answers.

I called several good stands with no
takers.

My calling partner and I gave it our all
with no takers. I was completely confused.

We set up where two small streams join
together. I set up in some buck brush and he set up around the corner of the
hill 30 yrds away. I made a great deer in distress with a johnny stewart grunt
call. I wish I could find that call again, I'd buy it for sure.

I called for 20 minutes when I heard a
LOUD SCREAM then "BOOM!"

I stood up and looked at my partner, and
said "Bobcat?"

He said "MOUNTAIN LION!"

I looked behind me and there it was 20
feet away.

Game and fish were called, and they
initially wrote him up for no tag and closed area, but after investigating they
decided it was a threat to me and he shot it to protect me. (Which is what
happened.) They said that by the bullet hole through both shoulder blades, they
could tell the lion was crouched and ready to pounce on the funny looking deer
in the brush. (Me!) When my partner went to court, they went ahead and dropped
all the charges.

Great stories...
sounds like Wyoming Creek Bottoms can produce when the Coyotes go quiet!

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A12
MADMAX, Hunting-Washington.com

I decided to head over to Tarboo lake near
Quilcene and call coyotes. I've gone there a lot over the years. I parked in my
same old spot and went in to the same old stump that I've killed a few coyote's
from and also missed the shot on the bobcat, it's a sweet set up. I hunt in the
bigger timber and call where the timber corner meets the clear-cut and the
doghair. So I get down to my stump and start checking things out for the setup.
I saw some tracks that I thought were bobcat due to their size. I thought to
myself, "Cool, bobcats are still here."

I got all comfy and put my headnet on and
started my calls, I call for 1 hour at a time, and about 5 minutes apart, and
try and stay real still except for moving my head. I gave a few squeals, and
notice a woodpecker fly over in front of me working on a blowdown tree. This is
good... it's making the squeaking noises woodpeckers make, and I'm thinking it
will draw anything that comes in towards it. So I wait a few minutes and call
again.

I stopped calling, swept my head back and
forth and back again, then all of sudden I see it!
I recognize it as a cat looking at me from behind a horizontal blowdown tree,
just the head peeking over it. Then it hits me, it's a cougar!

I don't want it getting closer, it was at
about 50 yards, so I pick up the mini 14 and put the peep on it... Bang! I got
it! Head shot!

I run over to and check it out. Just to
make sure I pop it again in the chest. Dead kitty.
It's a female, so to make darn sure no 1st year cubs are with it, I make a bunch
noise to scare anything in the area away.

The cougar turned out to be 110 lbs. and
seven and half feet long. I look at the rug everyday and she was excellent
eating. I used a burnham bros C-3 reed shoved in the end of 8 inches of auto
fuel line!

Some may be surprised I left the place
name in this story... I did it on purpose. Tarboo is a 5 mile dirt road into one
of my favorite lowland fishing lakes, it's mostly public/timber company land all
the way in, and it's very heavily traveled. (Hunters, Fishermen, Dirt Bikers,
Partiers [with their rotten stinking filthy booze and trash], Shooters,
Photographers, Picnic groups, and many others...) It just goes to show, you just
never know! Great story madmax!

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A13
Hunting
Washington Member JamieB:

I had been riding a gated road, glassing clear cuts looking for bear and I
checked the two trail cams I have up in the area.

There's this one cut up on the side
of a ridge that I've been seeing a lot of deer in all summer, a few good bucks.
The road side hills right through the middle of the cut. This cut is 4 or 5
yards old, about a mile long and 600 yards wide, not to brushy looking down from
the road, mostly dry grass about 4 feet tall.

I Set up around 30 feet below a wide
corner in the road, sat on the ground, leaned back against a stump and called
off and on for around 20 minutes. I was using a Johnny Stewart cotton-tail in
distress. I like this call, it is just raspy enough but not too much. I started
out as loud as I can blow that call, about two minutes of loud, fast and sorta
erratic, changing the sound with my hands over the end of the call. I don't have
a set pattern to my calling, just call for a couple of minutes then glass for a
few, call some more and keep repeating until I cant sit still anymore, then move
on.

It had been a few minutes since my
last calling, and I just put the bino's down when I saw movement to my left in
the grass. I thought it was a deer trying to sneak past my up the hill at first.
Turns out, the cat came up the hill until even with me, and turned towards me
and stepped out of the tall grass at 30 yards.

He saw my as soon as I saw him. My
rifle was sitting across my legs, my right hand on it so it came up as soon as
my brain registered cougar. He stared at me for a couple of seconds, more than
enough time for me to make a good shot... if the season had been open! After a
couple of seconds he turned straight away from me and it was only one leap and
he was out of my sight. I stood up hoping to get a look at him out in the clear
cut farther but he didn't go down the ridge so I didn't see him again.

Cat Shows Up On a Bear Stand! Great Story,
Jamie!

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A13
Okanagan, Vancouver Island, BC:

We called a cougar this week and watched it for 11 minutes inside of 30
yards.

On an evening patrol after a bear for a young hunting partner, he saw a cougar.
We tried to call it soon after with a hand call. The call is a prototype closed
reed prey distress designed and made by Rainshadow that he let me try out. It
has a lower, raspy jackrabbit tone.

We set up on a brush choked old logging road, a lane between walls of alder
saplings. We had the advantage of being pretty sure the cat was on the downhill
side of the road so we could concentrate there. Within 1 ½ to two minutes, the
cougar showed up on the edge of the road and started watching us from partial
hiding behind a light screen of leaves.

The lion was hard to see with naked eye even though it was closer than 30 yards,
but with binoculars we could easily see the front half of the cat. His face and
eyes and white chin are engraved in my memory. Part of his face plus some of his
neck and all of his shoulder were wide open and easy for a scoped rifle. When he
changed position and edged closer, he showed the front of his chest free and
clear for a shot.

After two or three minutes we started timing and the cat stayed another nine
minutes. I would call softly every minute or two to hold his interest. Once I
switched to a few seconds of frenetic fast sound and the cat crouched down and
edged a foot closer, his chin just above the big paws with his eyes intent.
After awhile he stood again, and he kept looking across the road, telegraphing
that he was going to cross. Sure enough, he walked across in the open and into
the brush on the uphill side.

My hunting partner and I both took pictures but it was too dim in the sundown
canyon for the little digital cameras we had to pick up enough light when zoomed
in. We first saw the lion about 8:55 PM. The lion is circled below but it is a
virtually worth less picture.

I thought that all cougar seasons were closed and so had not bought a 2010
license nor tag when the new license year recently started. My companion had a
scoped rifle in hand but had not bought a cougar tag since he didn’t think the
season was open either. We’d read the regs wrong. A half hour later at our camp,
a friend who lives in the area pointed out in the regs that cougar is still open
in that area.

Call it a cosmic joke to have such an easy shot with no tag. I felt like
grinning and crying.
It was a fun treat to see him and we picked up a bit more about lion traits.

It's a long story especially for one where no lion was killed but I learned some things.
He ( all varmints are referred to as he till you kill 'em and prove otherwise) came in after about 20 minutes of Adult Cottontail on my foxpro.

I wasn't really targeting a lion, was more bobcat hunting, but I was in an area with a lot of lion and deer sign and not surprised to see one come there.

I had set up in a draw with doug fir and pine, relatively open. The finger ridges on either side were choked with chapparal and mountain mahogany. I had my FX3 in the low hanging limb of a gnarly old doug fir, with my "commanche war feather" dangling in the breeze beneath it.

There was a good deer trail going just below that through the draw, I wasn't able to see the trail where it came out of the brush on both sides at one time. I opted for the down wind view. I like to be able to shoot down wind, since that's where most varmints will end up if you don't kill or spook them first in my experiences.

When the lion showed up he was 60 yards from me, about 45 from the caller. He just walked in like he owned the world and stopped behind some long limbs of a doug fir at fory yards. If he would have moved 5 yards or less in almost any direction he would have been in plain view. I got my rifle pointed at the spot he came from in case he left that way and continued to call like I had been, about 30-40 seconds of sound then 1-3 minutes of quiet. This went on for 20 minutes and he never moved.

I was starting to think he had sneaked away, but wasn't sure how, when someone started target practicing on a road just up the hill from me. The shooting was close and didn't stop for the rest of the time I was there. They would shoot then it would get quiet for few minutes and start back up again. After another 15 minutes of calling and shooting noise and no lion, I figured he had managed leave without me seeing.

I have a few lion sounds on my call and figured this would be a good time to play around with them since I know there was a lion within earshot. I tried some female calls off and on not too loud then a lion whistle the same way with no reaction. I was hoping to hear some kind of a noise made by an actual lion. After about 15 minutes of lion sound experiment and no movement or reply I really figured he had left. I let everything set quiet for about 5 minutes and changed to a blacktail doe distress, by now I figured I didn't have anything to lose so I may as well see If a change of sound would make a difference.

Well it did.

As soon as I turned on the deer sound, I saw the lion slinking off kind of the way it came in, a little lower on a different deer trail. Just by the way he was moving I figured he'd had enough and was leaving for good. I had a .223 with me so I didn't want to shoot unless it was a head or neck shot. Just before he was over the edge into the thick brush I held on his head and shot as he was walking away. He never even acted like I had shot, just kept walking, but by now was in the brush. I racked another shell and was feeling around on the ground for my spent casing when I looked down there and the lion was looking right at me. He was behind some mahogany brush and tall grass, and all I could see was his head. I got on him again and was just about to shoot when he looked the other way, so now it was the back of his head I was holding on. I slowly squeezed the trigger and lost sight of him. I didn't feel too confident in the shot since there was some grass and twigs my bullet would have had to weave through. I waited about 5 minutes, the target shooters were going at it the whole time, and headed down for look. I cleanly missed, he was gone for good this time.

It was disappointing to be so close for so long and not be able to make it happen. But I have lots of time and my country is lousy with lions, so there will be other chances.

This is the fourth lion that's come to the call when I've been there, and they all came to a rabbit sound.

One showed up after almost an hour, and the others have all been there in 20 minutes or less.

This one and one more came when bobcats were the target.

One came in the summer when we were calling coyotes.

The hour long wait was on a lion stand.

Some good observations to be made in this
story. Thanks AO.

A15 Cory, Oregon

Slightly over a year ago, I was contacted by my father, who lives in Indiana.
He told me the that he was going to get into predator hunting. Specifically, he
was going to start hunting coyotes in Indiana. As he always does, he did
research on what kind of an electronic caller he should purchase, and bought a
really expensive one. He immediately went out and started calling in coyotes and
shooting them in Indiana.

Not content with such a small predator as a coyote, he learned about a seminar
in Ohio on calling cougars. He drove to Ohio attended the seminar, and of course
went nuts over the thought of calling in and killing a cougar. He called me here
in Oregon and announced that he was going to be coming to Oregon for our annual
elk bowhunt in N.E. Oregon. I have to admit that I was skeptical. I have hunted
elk and deer and bear in Oregon and had never heard of anyone trying to call in
a cougar. The traditional method of hunting cougars with dogs had been outlawed
in 1995. My understanding was that now cougar hunting mainly consisted of
accidentally bumping into them in the woods while in pursuit of other game.

However, I agreed to give it a try and in September of 2010, we went to the Sled
Springs Unit in N.E. Oregon to give it a try.

We were using the traditional fawn in distress call. Our first few tries, I
realized that deer would flock to the fawn distress call almost every time we
set up. We called in dozens of deer who would run in to our speaker and then
look confused when there was no fawn there, actually in distress. I was
convinced that at least the sound must be working if the deer thought it was
real.

On our third day of calling in the evening, we walked in on a logging road about
350 yards from where I had parked my truck. We had seen a great deal of deer
tracks on this road (more then usual). We set the speaker on a stump next to a
very small pine tree that that was leaning over. The pine tree hid the speaker
from the downhill side. I went up the hill 15 yards from the speaker and sat
down on the ground. My Father, went to my right about 40 yards and sat down on
another stump. I was facing to the west and it was 5:30 in the afternoon. Not
good for me as the sun was right in my face. My Father turned the speaker on and
after about three minutes of the fawn sound, I heard a scraping noise on the
speaker. I could not see the speaker from my seated position was convinced that
it was a squirrel who was curious about the speaker. In my head, there was no
way a full size animal could be that close to me and I not be able to see it.
About 3-4 seconds passed and I heard the sound again, only this time I saw the
small pine tree move. Now I knew that something bigger was at the speaker. I
leaned up onto my knees and I could see a cougar’s ears sticking up above the
speaker. Just as I saw this, the cougar grabbed my Dad’s speaker and took off
with it through the small pine tree, and down the hill, with the sound still
going.
I jumped to my feet and took a step to the right to try to get a shot at the
cougar as he was running down the hill with the speaker in his mouth. I won’t
give you the all the excuses I have about missing, but a hurried shot, in the
sun at my first cougar, that was running away with a very expensive piece of
equipment in his mouth was tough. I believe that I shot right behind him. He
stopped for a second as I tried to work the bolt on my rifle, and then he took
off down the hill full speed. I ran to my right to try to get another angle on
him through the trees. I saw my Dad, and the look on his face, like “what in the
world is wrong with my son?” The only thing I could get out of my mouth was,
“Cougar’s got the speaker, he’s running down the hill!”

I never got another look at the cougar, but my Father had seen his tail
disappear over the hill. My Dad did not believe me that cougar had stolen the
speaker, until we walked down to where I had shot. The speaker had quit making
noise and it was laying on the ground there. It had tooth marks and cougar spit
all over it. Turning it off and back on, and the speaker was working again. No
blood or hair found and I knew that I had missed. We stood on the hill laughing
till we cried because we figured that no one would believe that a cougar had
stole our speaker. However, we did have the saliva and tooth marks for proof.
The rest of the hunt was uneventful and no other cougars were called in.

This brings us to September of 2011. After my experience from 2010, I had gone
and purchased my own caller and an AR-15 rifle in 6.8 SPC. My thought being that
if I had semi-auto the first time, after the cougar had stopped I would have had
a better follow-up shot.

My Dad spent most of 2011, on the phone with me making a strategy about this
year’s hunt. He also came up with the idea to bring my ten year old son this
year, with the thought being that we could call a coyote into him.

We got to my camp on Monday August 29, 2011. We called in one coyote that
evening that my son could not see. Over the next couple of days we called in
several others, with him missing one facing him at 75 yards. He was using a
single shot .44 Magnum rifle with very reduced loads so that it did not kick
him. On Thursday September 01, 2011, I suggested that we go behind our camp to
hunt coyotes as I had heard them howling all night for the last two nights. We
did a couple of set-ups with a rabbit distress call with no luck.

Our final spot of the evening was a mere .6 miles from camp. We were in a small
clearing about 200 yards off of a logging road that we had walked in on. My Dad
was sitting about four feet to my right with my son in between us. I did not
have my rifle as we were doing the mentored youth hunting program here in
Oregon. The Mentor cannot have a weapon when you are hunting with a mentored
youth. We set the speaker next to a tree about 35 yards away, and had good wind
blowing from the speaker to us. I started off with some coyote howls and
immediately started getting answers from about 300 yards away on the other side
of the speaker, an ideal situation. I changed the sounds to aggressive coyote
barks and got answered back with the same kind of barks. I could tell the
coyotes were coming our way. They seemed to stop out about 100 yards, and just
stayed out there barking. This went on for nearly 20 minutes, and they would
just not close the distance. I was getting frustrated, and my Dad suggested that
I change the sound to coyote pups in distress. This had worked earlier for us in
the week on having a couple of coyotes coming in.

I switched the sound, and after being on for about 30-45 seconds I heard a loud
noise coming our way, and closing the distance fast. My thought at the time was
it was a bunch of coyotes rushing in and the biggest problem would be for my son
to pick one to shoot. I shut the sound on the speaker off, as I heard this,
thinking that the coyotes would rush the clearing looking for the sound, and my
son would get a shot.

I looked back up expecting to see coyotes, when out of the bushes about 15 yards
from the speaker sprung a large lion. He was charging the speaker at full speed
and stopped about 10 yards from it. The cougar had come from the side my Dad was
sitting on, and I whispered “Cougar!” I was expecting to here my Dad’s rifle go
off, but there was only silence. I realized that he could not see the cougar
from where he was sitting. I could only see the cougar’s face and part of his
front shoulder. I had the intention of letting my son take the shot, but
thought, If my Dad can’t see him, maybe my son can’t either from the angle where
they were sitting and the bushy tree that was in the way. I told my son “give me
the gun”. We were lucky that he is right handed, and I am left handed, as we
only had to move the gun a few inches.

As, I took the gun and got the cougar in the scope, he had spotted us, and I
could tell from his body posture, that he knew something was wrong and was
getting ready to leave. I put the crosshairs on his front shoulder, with my last
thought being, that I hoped the reduced .44 magnum rifle was enough gun for him.
My shot hit him perfect and he dropped straight down to the ground. He made one
quick attempt to get up, but couldn't and kicked his paws for about 5-10 seconds
before he was dead. I turned to my Dad and said “dead cougar on the ground!” He
was flabbergasted as neither of us had expected a cougar to come into our coyote
sounds. I asked my son if he had seen the cougar before I shot, and he said he
could only see it’s head. My Father had not seen him at all because of the tree.
My assumption had been right about their angle of vision.

On analyzing, our set-up for this, we believe that the cougar hearing all of the
coyote barks back and forth, had decided that the coyotes had got into a fight
and then switching to the coyote distress sounds, one of them had been injured,
and he was expecting an easy meal.

I must say that I felt bad about neither of them being able to take the shot.
But, it sometimes goes that way in hunting. We walked the 35 yards down to the
cougar, he was a magnificent cat. Checked in the next day at the ODFW office, he
weighed 125 lbs, field dressed. He was 7 feet 4 inches from nose to tail, and
estimated to be 4-5 years old.

This was our first cougar, I say our’s because it was team effort. Each of the
hunts lasted about 9-10 days. We called in one cougar for each hunt, 2010 and
2011. We hunted morning and evening with an average of 2-3 set-ups each morning
or evening. On, both hunts we called in a cougar within four days of arrival at
our camp. I am not sure if this is average, above or below. If it is an average,
then I would say that if you are interested in calling in a cougar, it may not
be as hard as you think. Apparently, both fawn and coyote sounds will work.

A16 DS: Oregon

Several
years ago
while
November
muzzleloader
elk hunting
in the
Santiam Unit
of Oregon I
saw a
cougar.

John and I
had a dozen
elk spooked
off the
ridge above
us, running
past me down
the hill. I
walked the
overgrown
skid trail
up the ridge
to the top,
then started
cow calling.
John went
the other
direction to
the upper
end of this
same ridge.

The cougar
was
crouching
behind a
shoulder
high douglas
fir tree
twitching
it’s tail
about 25
yards away.
It took me
about a
second to
“see” the
cougar thru
the tree. It
was facing
me ready to
pounce. By
the time I
cocked the
hammer on
the 58 cal
rifle,
raised it
and aimed,
the cougar
was flying
thru the air
off to my
right. I
never got a
shot. It
disappeared
into the
dark timber
from the
reprod patch
we were
hunting.

My partner
was up the
ridge
several
hundred
yards and
heard me
plainly,
shouting
“get down
here now”. I
wanted him
to go into
the dark
timber with
me. He
grabbed my
arm, telling
me it was
“Miller
Time” and we
should head
back to camp
a few miles
away.

Guess the
cow call
sort of
works on
cats.

A17 Hunter JASNT

I was elk hunting and had
just moved camp to the opposite side of the draw.

I set up on a cliff overlooking a thick cedar grove that followed a creek down
the draw. From where I was set up I could see straight across to the other side
where I had been camped the day before. Down below there was an open corridor
between me and the cedars about 30 yards wide with mostly brush and trails.

I was getting bored and started playing with my ecaller playing elk sounds I had
put together of several cows talking sweet to a young bull. Sequence lasted 8
min and I played it twice. Then I spot something right next to where my truck
had been parked the day before. I pull up the binos and see a cougar sitting
looking my way. 566 yards across the draw.

I had already tagged a cat but figured I'd see how it would go. I hit play one
more time and immediately the cat drops down in too the draw. 22 min later the
cougar is right below me focused toward my call. I watch it slowly sneaking
through the trails and brush till it gets to the trail that leads up to me.

I jumped up and yell, "Hey cat!" In a flash, it's gone! Never saw it leave, it
just disappeared.

It looked to be an old cat as it was very long and tall with what looked like
loose skin hanging from it's belly like and old barn cat that has recently
weaned a litter. That was the day I fell in love with cougar calling!

A18 Matt /Predator Masters Member - Colorado

I was Turkey Hunting here in Colorado a few
years back on the Front Range. I drove approximately 35 minutes from my house to
a spot that I had been seeing lots of Turkey sign. When I got to the spot where
I was going to park I saw another guy had beaten me to it. I figured I would try
to get around him and go in deeper so I wouldn't mess up his hunt.

I walked a logging road down that was in
between 2 ridges and it led down to a canyon. I thought I would walk down the
road call and see if I could get reaction gobble. I walked the road and used my
box call every 80-100 yards. I walked to the end where there was private land,
had a snack and started walking back the direction I came in. As I was walking
back I did the same thing - called every 80-100 yards.

As I was about a quarter of a mile from
where I had parked I could hear the other hunter calling on top. I got to a
point of the road where you could look down in between the ridges to the canyon.
As I looked down I could see a Cougar standing about 40 yards a way from me
looking through the grass and I froze. The cat calmly turned around and ran up
the other side of the ridge not making a single sound when he ran off.

The cat had to of followed me out of the
canyon beside the road and I had spotted him when I got in between the lion and
the other hunter. I have been back to that area several times to try to call a
mountain lion in without any luck.

I think this year I will try with one of
Rainshadow's calls!

A19: Matt /Predator Masters Member - Colorado

Bringing out new hunters is something that
I really enjoy. I love to share the experiences that I have and hope its
something they will eventually do themselves.

My buddy, who I had taken out a few times
Turkey Hunting that year, was having a blast and really getting into it. We were
going to try out a new area that I hadn't been to but thought it was worth
checking out. I figured we would get in there mid day and look around to see if
we could find any sign. It was an area where we would have to cross a river and
hike in so I knew not a lot of other people were as crazy as I was to do that.

We got across the river at approximately
11am and started to hike through this huge canyon. It was an area that didn't
have a lot of cover due to a fire 15 or so years back. As we were walking I was
calling every 100 yards to see if I could get a reaction on the other side of
the canyon where I figured turkeys had gone for the day. My buddy had a
different idea and thought we should split up and go check out the other side. I
kept explaining to him that we needed to stay together in case we were in a
calling scenario and the turkey would lock up out of range. The discussion
quickly turned into an argument and I kept going up hill while he lagged behind
me 100 yards back.

He stopped to sit on some rocks where I had
lasted called. I motioned to him that we should get on top to see if there was
any sign. Once he got up to me we stopped to drink some water. As soon as I took
a sip of water I looked down from where we came from saw 3 animals and I thought
"Dangit" someone's dogs are following me.

As soon as I thought that it quickly
registered in my brain - Lions!!!

They walked out from the other side of the
canyon right across the rocks my friend has just been sitting on. If he had not
moved 5 minutes earlier he would have had 3 mountain lions on top of him. Since
it was a very open burn area we watched them go down into the valley we had
walked into where it was very thick brush.

We waited 30 or so minutes and talked about
how we witnessed something not a lot of people see in their lifetime but we
still had to get out of there and our exit was right where we saw the mountain
lions go through. As we were walking out we were trying to make plenty of noise
so we wouldn't surprise the mountain lions when we got to the valley.

Once we got there I looked over about 75
yards there was a mountain lion looking right at us. I didnt see the other two.
That one disappeared into the thick stuff and we quickly made it back across the
river.

I think it was 2 sub adults that hadn't
left their mom and they were looking for a turkey dinner.

My friend still hunts with me to this day
and if he says something about going in the opposite direction I give him a hard
time reminding him that if he didn't listen to me things might have not of
turned out so well for him!